These are the adventures of two travelers in Asia, specifically China, who enjoy cycling and writing about their adventures.
The title comes from the idea of a Third Culture kid who is raised as one culture in a completely different culture and identifies as conglomeration of the two cultures.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Collaborating

I have to rant for a second. I'm sorry. I just am so fed up with being blocked from access to data I need by a first year PhD student. In today's case, it just prompted me to figure out that I didn't actually need the data I had asked her for, but for heaven's sake, what happened to sharing? Didn't you ever learn that in kindergarten? When did you become so important that you could make decisions on what to give me? What happened to working effectively as a team? Last time this happened she was basically blocking us from getting access to two defended master's theses because in China those don't become public for two years after graduation. Never mind that one was completed in Ireland. So then I asked her advisor (and one of my post-doc supervisors) if I could use it and he said yes. He never sent it to me, but I do have in writing that I can have both those theses. And I will eventually need one of them. I am not going to steal your data. I don't want your data. I don't understand the chemistry in your data. I am your colleague and collaborator! And what is with not sharing the GIS data with the poor archaeologists working here too? Why should environmental science get all the data but not share it with the archaeologists? Since I collaborate with them, I remedied that particular situation, but it is really ridiculous. And now I feel petty, but I have no intention of giving them the 1975 USGS satellite image I purchased. Forget it. I shared it with the archaeologists because they share data with me and treat me as an equal in this enterprise we call science.